


nine lives to last us a few nights more

by meios



Series: deneb ryder // 700 club [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Drunkenness, First Kiss, First Time, M/M, Mutual Masturbation, Non-Explicit Sex, They regret nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 05:01:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10712721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meios/pseuds/meios
Summary: the drink that dutch had shoved at him had been good enough for one or two more glasses, followed by some more with gil during their game, cards long forgotten in lieu of their conversation, a new game of footsie sparking up under the table, the shadows of their corner of the bar something to be savored.





	nine lives to last us a few nights more

**Author's Note:**

> i know that drunk sex carries with it a bunch of consent issues, but this is not the case here. it's short, but there's enthusiastic consent from both parties.

His heart is in his throat, in his chest where it belongs, in the dark recesses of some forgotten organ that won’t hurt until a bullet’s gone through it once or fifty times. The abandoned aspect of this apartment isn’t lost on Ryder, especially not when the door refuses to lock, when there are papers and clothes strewn about the floor like a college dorm room—the bloodstains haven’t been cleaned up, the vague stench of death and heat sinks bring bile to his mouth, sharing a residence with his heart.

 

The drink that Dutch had shoved at him had been good enough for one or two more glasses, followed by some more with Gil during their game, cards long forgotten in lieu of their conversation, a new game of footsie sparking up under the table, the shadows of their corner of the bar something to be savored. For once, he had been able to be Ryder, just Ryder, and Gil had looked at him with hunger evident in his gaze, perhaps made more apparent by the liquor in their systems.

 

The kiss had been something of an interruption, Ryder swallowing down the joke on the engineer’s tongue, sucking down the surprised kind of yelp that escapes him. He can’t be damned to remember what their conversation had even been leading up to when Gil kisses him back, a hand on Ryder’s cheek, the other on his thigh, warm and right like it had been molded to fit there. The alcohol thrums inside of him like an airplane, like a shuttle taking off from Earth all those years ago, like how he’s imagined their first kiss to be: not like this.

 

They would’ve been making jokes like usual, Ryder slowly crowding into Gil’s space, pressing him closer to his desk, nestled in between Gil’s thighs until there would be nowhere left to go, hands ghosting over bodies but never touching, eyelids drooping and eyes flicking over wettened lips and it would have been hungry, slow, full of a pained sort of aching that’s been fluttering in Ryder’s chest since he’d first seen Gil back on Earth.

 

Gil parts from his mouth now, presses Ryder harder into the wall as he trails kisses along the sharp line of his jaw. There’s the slightest click of teeth against flesh, tracing every scar from every skin graft and bullet and knife that’s left him hard to look at in the morning, and when Gil pauses to suck a mark into the hollow of Ryder’s throat, he can’t help the small whisper of his name. His hips jut out, unconsciously seeking friction, some kind of relief lest he implode and explode and betray the semblance of cool he’s managed to maintain.

 

“Fuck, you’re gorgeous,” Gil mumbles, calloused hands—big and rough and hot—rucking up Ryder’s shirt, mapping out every single tattoo, bump of his abs, puckered scar, every little abnormality that Ryder’s tried to hide for so goddamn long. “ _Gorgeous_ ,” he repeats, moving up to kiss his mouth once more before dropping down and sending bombs of kisses along his chest. “ _How_ I managed to wait this long, I’ll never bloody know.”

 

“ _You_ waited,” Ryder says, laughing softly. He extricates a hand from its place on Gil’s hip and plants it on his head, ruffling the hair there, pulling some and smoothing it back just to hear the purr that Gil makes in response. “I walked into a fuckin’ wall first time I saw you.”

 

Gil snorts. “Lucky wall.”

 

Ryder rolls his eyes, albeit smiling, tugs at Gil’s hair until he relinquishes his grasp on his chest and surges back up, steals his mouth back with his own. He’s drunk on this, not the booze: on how Gil’s beard scratches at his flesh until it’s ruby red and hypersensitive, on how their laughter and smiling threaten to break the seal that they’ve created at their mouths, on how Gil’s hands are at once gentle and not so much. Their hips meet, bodies flush, and Ryder is reaching down to grip the back of Gil’s thighs, mumbling _up_ into their breaths, and Gil’s legs are around him and _Gil_ is encompassing him, swallowing him whole.

 

If he could stay like this forever, forever wouldn’t even be enough.

 

The only words that spill from his lips are, “You want—?”

 

“ _Yes_.”

 

They’re symbiotic in this, Ryder’s head a quiet whirr of sensory overload as Gil grinds and slows in spite of how much Ryder knows they should be going _fastwantnowplease_. Gil displays his neck when Ryder snuffles over it, wordless, a hand sweeping over the sleek baby soft to stubble to hair that is Ryder’s scalp. Biting, he wants to own in the basest sense. The engineer breathes his name into the air, hedonistic and blasphemous like a prayer, and it’s here that Ryder knows what his goal in life should always and forever be:

 

He wants these sounds imprinted upon his vertebrae, wants to fall asleep to them, to hear them every goddamn day, _make them happen_ every goddamn day. He _wants_ , and Ryder is utterly struck by it, by the heat in his belly, the gasps Gil makes in his ear—heavy and heady and good. There is a hand splayed over the planes of the engineer’s back, the other still holding him up. Gil’s hand is slinking downward, caught between them; every bare touch renders them both shuddering messes.

 

They are ripped apart, supernovas in distant space casting beauty upon a catastrophe, the numerous problems and stressors that threaten their very existences paling in comparison to the _herenowwant_ of the moment. Their bodies move in tandem, Gil’s feet back on the floor; they shed pants and undergarments, hot touches on hotter flesh, and Ryder knows that Gil will ruin him.

 

He cups Gil’s face between large hands and kisses him, slows it down for a moment as their bodies slot together again. The engineer takes the both of them in hand, and Ryder knows from the noise that he, himself, makes that no one else could ever have him. And Ryder touches, palms flat against hard muscle, slinking underneath the thick fabric of Gil’s shirt. He whimpers, wants to say everything and nothing, opts to kiss down Gil’s neck instead, marking him so that he can’t forget, _please don’t forget_.

 

When the climax hits, it’s like a train from centuries ago: steam engines, bells and whistles and thick metal screaming down the tracks, knocking the very breath from Ryder’s lungs. He sucks down every moan, every noise, muffles them with his mouth on Gil’s, tucking him into his embrace, flush like skin.

 

They leave messy and sated and whole.

 

\---

 

“How can I even know it’s real, Gil?” Ryder teases months later on Eos, color rising on his cheeks. “We haven’t even kissed yet.”

 

Gil raises an eyebrow. “Yes, we have.”

 

Ryder hums. “Not sober.”

 

“Well then,” Gil laughs, crowding into his space, “let’s remedy that.”


End file.
